Sons and Lovers
Miriam. After all, the girl was the better woman of the two, he
thought, if it came to goodness. He went indoors. His mother looked
excited. She was beating with her hand rhythmically on the sofa-arm, as
women do who are wearing out. He could never bear to see the movement.
There was a silence; then he began to talk.
In chapel Miriam saw him find the place in the hymn-book for Clara, in
exactly the same way as he used for herself. And during the sermon he
could see the girl across the chapel, her hat throwing a dark shadow
over her face. What did she think, seeing Clara with him? He did not
stop to consider. He felt himself cruel towards Miriam.
After chapel he went over Pentrich with Clara. It was a dark autumn
night. They had said good-bye to Miriam, and his heart had smitten him
as he left the girl alone. “But it serves her right,” he said inside
himself, and it almost gave him pleasure to go off under her eyes with
this other handsome woman.
There was a scent of damp leaves in the darkness. Clara’s hand lay warm
and inert in his own as they walked. He was full of conflict. The
battle that raged inside him made him feel desperate.
Up Pentrich Hill Clara leaned against him as he went. He slid his arm
round her waist. Feeling the strong motion of her body under his arm as
she walked, the tightness in his chest because of Miriam relaxed, and
the hot blood bathed him. He held her closer and closer.
Then: “You still keep on with Miriam,” she said quietly.
“Only talk. There never _was_ a great deal more than talk between us,”
he said bitterly.
“Your mother doesn’t care for her,” said Clara.
“No, or I might have married her. But it’s all up really!”
Suddenly his voice went passionate with hate.
“If I was with her now, we should be jawing about the ‘Christian
Mystery’, or some such tack. Thank God, I’m not!”
They walked on in silence for some time.
“But you can’t really give her up,” said Clara.
“I don’t give her up, because there’s nothing to give,” he said.
“There is for her.”
“I don’t know why she and I shouldn’t be friends as long as we live,”
he said. “But it’ll only be friends.”
Clara drew away from him, leaning away from contact with him.
“What are you drawing away for?” he asked.
She did not answer, but drew farther from him.
“Why do you want to walk alone?” he asked.
Still there was no answer. She walked resentfully, hanging her head.
“Because I said I would be friends with Miriam!” he exclaimed.
She would not answer him anything.
“I tell you it’s only words that go between us,” he persisted, trying
to take her again.
She resisted. Suddenly he strode across in front of her, barring her
way.
“Damn it!” he said. “What do you want now?”
“You’d better run after Miriam,” mocked Clara.
The blood flamed up in him. He stood showing his teeth. She drooped
sulkily. The lane was dark, quite lonely. He suddenly caught her in his
arms, stretched forward, and put his mouth on her face in a kiss of
rage. She turned frantically to avoid him. He held her fast. Hard and
relentless his mouth came for her. Her breasts hurt against the wall of
his chest. Helpless, she went loose in his arms, and he kissed her, and
kissed her.
He heard people coming down the hill.
“Stand up! stand up!” he said thickly, gripping her arm till it hurt.
If he had let go, she would have sunk to the ground.
She sighed and walked dizzily beside him. They went on in silence.
“We will go over the fields,” he said; and then she woke up.
But she let herself be helped over the stile, and she walked in silence
with him over the first dark field. It was the way to Nottingham and to
the station, she knew. He seemed to be looking about. They came out on
a bare hilltop where stood the dark figure of the ruined windmill.
There he halted. They stood together high up in the darkness, looking
at the lights scattered on the night before them, handfuls of
glittering points, villages lying high and low on the dark, here and
there.
“Like treading among the stars,” he said, with a quaky laugh.
Then he took her in his arms, and held her fast. She moved aside her
mouth to ask, dogged and low:
“What time is it?”
“It doesn’t matter,” he pleaded thickly.
“Yes it does—yes! I must go!”
“It’s early yet,” he said.
“What time is it?” she insisted.
All round lay the black night, speckled and spangled with lights.
“I don’t know.”
She put her hand on his chest, feeling for his watch. He felt the
joints fuse into fire. She groped in his waistcoat pocket, while he
stood panting. In the darkness she could see the round, pale face of
the watch, but not the figures. She stooped over it. He was panting
till he could take her in his arms again.
“I can’t see,” she said.
“Then don’t bother.”
“Yes; I’m going!” she said, turning away.
“Wait! I’ll look!” But he could not see. “I’ll strike a match.”
He secretly hoped it was too late to catch the train. She saw the
glowing lantern of his hands as he cradled the light: then his face lit
up, his eyes fixed on the watch. Instantly all was dark again. All was
black before her eyes; only a glowing match was red near her feet.
Where was he?
“What is it?” she asked, afraid.
“You can’t do it,” his voice answered out of the darkness.
There was a pause. She felt in his power. She had heard the ring in his
voice. It frightened her.
“What time is it?” she asked, quiet, definite, hopeless.
“Two minutes to nine,” he replied, telling the truth with a struggle.
“And can I get from here to the station in fourteen minutes?”
“No. At any rate—”
She could distinguish his dark form again a yard or so away. She wanted
to escape.
“But can’t I do it?” she pleaded.
“If you hurry,” he said brusquely. “But you could easily walk it,
Clara; it’s only seven miles to the tram. I’ll come with you.”
“No; I want to catch the train.”
“But why?”
“I do—I want to catch the train.”
Suddenly his voice altered.
“Very well,” he said, dry and hard. “Come along, then.”
And he plunged ahead into the darkness. She ran after him, wanting to
cry. Now he was hard and cruel to her. She ran over the rough, dark
fields behind him, out of breath, ready to drop. But the double row of
lights at the station drew nearer. Suddenly:
“There she is!” he cried, breaking into a run.
There was a faint rattling noise. Away to the right the train, like a
luminous caterpillar, was threading across the night. The rattling
ceased.
“She’s over the viaduct. You’ll just do it.”
Clara ran, quite out of breath, and fell at last into the train. The
whistle blew. He was gone. Gone!—and she was in a carriage full of
people. She felt the cruelty of it.
He turned round and plunged home. Before he knew where he was he was in
the kitchen at home. He was very pale. His eyes were dark and
dangerous-looking, as if he were drunk. His mother looked at him.
“Well, I must say your boots are in a nice state!” she said.
He looked at his feet. Then he took off his overcoat. His mother
wondered if he were drunk.
“She caught the train then?” she said.
“Yes.”
“I hope _her_ feet weren’t so filthy. Where on earth you dragged her I
don’t know!”
He was silent and motionless for some time.
“Did you like her?” he asked grudgingly at last.
“Yes, I liked her. But you’ll tire of her, my son; you know you will.”
He did not answer. She noticed how he laboured in his breathing.
“Have you been running?” she asked.
“We had to run for the train.”
“You’ll go and knock yourself up. You’d better drink hot milk.”
It was as good a stimulant as he could have, but he refused and went to
bed. There he lay face down on the counterpane, and shed tears of rage
and pain. There was a physical pain that made him bite his lips till
they bled, and the chaos inside him left him unable to think, almost to
feel.
“This is how she serves me, is it?” he said in his heart, over and
over, pressing his face in the quilt. And he hated her. Again he went
over the scene, and again he hated her.
The next day there was a new aloofness about him. Clara was very
gentle, almost loving. But he treated her distantly, with a touch of
contempt. She sighed, continuing to be gentle. He came round.
One evening of that week Sarah Bernhardt was at the Theatre Royal in
Nottingham, giving “La Dame aux Camélias”. Paul wanted to see this old
and famous actress, and he asked Clara to accompany him. He told his
mother to leave the key in the window for him.
“Shall I book seats?” he asked of Clara.
“Yes. And put on an evening suit, will you? I’ve never seen you in it.”
“But, good Lord, Clara! Think of _me_ in evening suit at the theatre!”
he remonstrated.
“Would you rather not?” she asked.
“I will if you _want_ me to; but I s’ll feel a fool.”
She laughed at him.
“Then feel a fool for my sake, once, won’t you?”
The request made his blood flush up.
“I suppose I s’ll have to.”
“What are you taking a suitcase for?” his mother asked.
He blushed furiously.
“Clara asked me,” he said.
“And what seats are you going in?”
“Circle—three-and-six each!”
“Well, I’m sure!” exclaimed his mother sarcastically.
“It’s only once in the bluest of blue moons,” he said.
He dressed at Jordan’s, put on an overcoat and a cap, and met Clara in
a café. She was with one of her suffragette friends. She wore an old
long coat, which did not suit her, and had a little wrap over her head,
which he hated. The three went to the theatre together.
Clara took off her coat on the stairs, and he discovered she was in a
sort of semi-evening dress, that left her arms and neck and part of her
breast bare. Her hair was done fashionably. The dress, a simple thing
of green crape, suited her. She looked quite grand, he thought. He
could see her figure inside the frock, as if that were wrapped closely
round her. The firmness and the softness of her upright body could
almost be felt as he looked at her. He clenched his fists.
And he was to sit all the evening beside her beautiful naked arm,
watching the strong throat rise from the strong chest, watching the
breasts under the green stuff, the curve of her limbs in the tight
dress. Something in him hated her again for submitting him to this
torture of nearness. And he loved her as she balanced her head and
stared straight in front of her, pouting, wistful, immobile, as if she
yielded herself to her fate because it was too strong for her. She
could not help herself; she was in the grip of something bigger than
herself. A kind of eternal look about her, as if she were a wistful
sphinx, made it necessary for him to kiss her. He dropped his
programme, and crouched down on the floor to get it, so that he could
kiss her hand and wrist. Her beauty was a torture to him. She sat
immobile. Only, when the lights went down, she sank a little against
him, and he caressed her hand and arm with his fingers. He could smell
her faint perfume. All the time his blood kept sweeping up in great
white-hot waves that killed his consciousness momentarily.
The drama continued. He saw it all in the distance, going on somewhere;
he did not know where, but it seemed far away inside him. He was
Clara’s white heavy arms, her throat, her moving bosom. That seemed to
be himself. Then away somewhere the play went on, and he was identified
with that also. There was no himself. The grey and black eyes of Clara,
her bosom coming down on him, her arm that he held gripped between his
hands, were all that existed. Then he felt himself small and helpless,
her towering in her force above him.
Only the intervals, when the lights came up, hurt him expressibly. He
wanted to run anywhere, so long as it would be dark again. In a maze,